This Giant King Cake Baby Man Is the Creepiest Mardi Gras Tradition

It's Mardi Gras and in New Orleans that means live music, 64-ounce takeout drinks and the world’s biggest and most disturbing King Cake Baby. If you haven’t been to NOLA during Carnival season, you might have missed him. Thank goodness he’s on Facebook now.

A mascot for the New Orleans NBA franchise (previously the Hornets, now the Pelicans), the six-foot-tall baby only comes out once a year. Looking at him, you can only assume his purpose is to evacuate the arena due to fear.

Mardi Gras float expert Jonathan Bertuccelli designed the costume as a sort of “demon spawn of the Burger King” man. Last week he told New Orleans Public Radio, “[My clients] wanted it to be a little…they didn’t say creepy-creepy, but to have something about it him. They didn’t want it to be cuddly and cute.”

If you’ve never seen King Cake Baby in action before, the Pelicans gave us this video of him hard at work terrorizing their offices over the weekend below. But be warned, you can never unsee him.